On December 22, 2017, U.S.-China Green Fund, an innovative private equity firm with a focus on green investments, announced that it has closed a transaction to invest RMB 500 million into Huitongda Network Co., Ltd. (“Huitongda”) to address rural sustainable development and poverty alleviation through private equity investments.

Founded in 2010 in Nanjing, Huitongda began to develop its rural e-commerce network in 2012. Through its O2O platform, Huitongda provides franchise members with training tools, financing, supply chain management, and sales support to better serve their rural customers.

As a pioneer in supplying electronics and home appliances to rural markets, the founders of Huitongda, Chairman Jianguo Wang and CEO Xiuxian Xu were keenly aware of the vast market potential of small and medium-sized townships and villages in China. The company has a deep understanding of the local characteristics of and the pivotal role mom-and-pop shops serve as both the agents for bringing goods to the countryside and upstream distribution channels for selling agricultural products.

Powered by the latest e-commerce technologies and the founders’ successful track record of building large-scale retail franchises, Huitongda developed a special new business model that has achieved great success. Now its network has reached over 78,000 mom-and-pop stores in 15,600 towns and villages across 18 provinces, serving nearly 50 million rural families with RMB 200 billion of GMV annually.

Dr. Bo Bai, CEO of the U.S.-China Green Fund, expressed his excitement and vision regarding this investment: “As a green private equity fund, we are pleased to become the green strategic investor into Huitongda to help transform it into a platform company to greenergize China’s country side, to improve the sustainability of China’s rural economy through both consumer service upgrades and environmental improvement, while also increasing farmers’ income and alleviating poverty. Huitongda’s innovative e-commerce business model and powerful network can be leveraged and enhanced to promote large-scale green product penetration and project execution for both green development and poverty alleviation in rural markets.”

Chairman Wang noted that “green development and poverty alleviation are an important focus of Huitongda’s future development. By empowering our tens of thousands of mom-and-pop shops, we are now promoting distributed solar systems for farmers’ rooftops and selling electric light pickup trucks to replace air-polluting diesel trucks. We are glad to have U.S.-China Green Fund become our green strategic investor. Through the partnership, we will be able to introduce more green products and technologies from U.S., Europe and China that are suitable for China’s rural markets. These products can also be commercialized through Huitongda’s vast rural network. In addition, we will continue to drive our network of mom-and-pop stores to serve as a channel to market for farmers to sell their agricultural products directly to urban consumers, expanding market reach and reducing distribution costs, and address poverty alleviation with market forces.”

Dr. Bai added, both companies are highly aligned on financial interests and social values to contribute to green development and poverty alleviation. The two companies agreed to empower some of the mom-and-pop shops to become “green village ambassadors” to help promote green products such as rooftop solar and source local green projects. The Fund is fully committed towards contributing to a green and sustainable rural economy through this meaningful investment in Huitongda.

About U.S.-China Green Fund

U.S.-China Green Fund is a commercially-run private equity fund whose mission is to promote sustainable green development in China through innovative U.S.-China collaborations in finance, green technology and business models. The Green Fund has developed a unique five-pillared business model “P.R.I.M.E.” (Policy, Research, Integration, Money and Execution), to leverage policy support and use “industry + technology + capital” investment strategy to support strong execution teams to achieve its goal to “Invest · Greenergize China.”The Fund has made a number of investments in two main areas: 1) green energy, energy efficiency, and environmental protection and 2) green smart cities and villages, making great strides in commercial building energy efficiency, data center energy savings, green smart homes, waste heat recovery, distributed solar, and green smart parking etc.

Maria Burns

Maria is a Viral News Editor who graduated from the University Of California. She likes social media trends, being semi-healthy, Buffalo Wild Wings and vodka with lime. When she isn’t writing, Maria loves to travel. She last went to Thailand to play with elephants and is planning a trip to Bali.